Blackorby v. BNSF Railway Co., No. 18-2372 (8th Cir. 2019)
Annotate this Case
Plaintiff appealed an adverse jury verdict on his retaliation claims under the Federal Railroad Safety Act, challenging the jury instructions. The Eighth Circuit agreed with plaintiff that the jury instructions misstated the "honestly held belief" defense in the context of the Act's contributing-factor standard, and misallocated and misstated the burden of proof.
The court explained that the plaintiff bears the burden of proving that intentional retaliation in response to protected conduct served as a contributing factor in an adverse employment action, and the defendant then bears the burden of proving an affirmative defense. In this case, the "honestly held belief" instruction failed to reference the contributing-factor standard and the instructions as a whole expressly incorporated this defense into plaintiff's case. Therefore, this failure to allocate the burden of proof to BNSF and to identify that burden of proof as clear and convincing evidence constituted prejudicial error. Accordingly, the court reversed the district court's judgment and remanded for further proceedings.
Court Description: Melloy, Author, with Shepherd and Grasz, Circuit Judges] Civil Case - Federal Railroad Safety Act. In this action claiming intentional retaliation, the jury instruction misstated the "honest held belief" defense in the context of the Act's contributing factor standard and misallocated and misstated the burden of proof. The plaintiff bears the burden of proving that intentional retaliation served as a contributing factor in an adverse employment action and the defense bears the burden of proving an affirmative defense by clear and convincing evidence that it would have taken the same action in absence of protected conduct. Error was prejudicial because the instructions as a whole identified the "honestly held belief" as part of the employee's prima facie case and notwithstanding an honestly held belief that the employee engaged in misconduct, an employer may be held liable if the retaliation was a contributing factor in the disciplinary decision. Blackorby's objection to the instruction was sufficiently specific to preserve the wording and allocation of burden of proof in the instructions. Case is reversed. [ August 22, 2019
Some case metadata and case summaries were written with the help of AI, which can produce inaccuracies. You should read the full case before relying on it for legal research purposes.
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.